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EDWARD J. O’BRIEN 



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HARD SAYINGS 





HARD SAYINGS 

"V^ 

EDWARD J. O’BRIEN 

v\ 

Author of “ White Fountains” and “ Distant Music” 



BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY 

MCMXXVI 






t 


Copyright, 1926 

By SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY 

(incorporated) 



OCT 2 9 76 


Printed in the United States of America 


THE MURRAY PRINTING COMPANY 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 

THE BOSTON BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 


©Cl ft 9 4 9 841 



I 


\ x>\\ON I "X- ■>— *»W 


TO 

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER 

AND 


JOHN COURNOS 







FOREWORD 


I met a poor man wandering the road, and after 
I had given him food and clothing, he showed me these 
sayings which he had written down. I have not seen 
him since that winter evening. 






HARD SAYINGS 








I 


Dead feet tramping wearily on the road, 
drumming in broken rhythm westward, westward, 
what of the dust you displace on the windy road? 
The cloud of it rises, settles, stirs uneasily, 
sinks to rest again till the next parade. 

But when the storm comes terrible with banners, 
the dust shall remember dead feet tramping the road 


3 


II 


Remember me when you shall meet joy on the road. 
Joy is a vulture that feeds on the hearts of giants. 
For joy is a desperate thing. 

I say to you that the joy of a child with a penny, 
the joy of a soldier defeated, 

the joy of a woman with child is a desperate thing. 
Lift up your joy as a sword 
to slay peace that peace may come. 

Commit harakiri and fall on your sword of joy. 

So shall you follow me to a certain star. 


4 


Ill 


In a nerve of my body called London, or New York, 
a channeled purpose floods from my brain with a 
dangerous dream of longing. 

I watch its torrent leaping the banks of war and peace, 
seeking an unknown ocean, but lost in strange muddy 
sands. 

I have hewn a new channel with my blood out of the 
unveined granite, 

out of my body and spirit’s passionate wars. 

Enter, London, New York, my wild nerve: struggle 
and foam! 

You must follow it in the end, but now it is clean and 
new. 


5 


IV 


Snails with worlds on our backs we are tracing a 
course, 

an inch a century, leaving our track behind us. 
Another inch to the sun from the sandy jungles of 
witchgrass! 

The sun is warming our shells with its ardour now. 


6 


V 


Seven years to renew the cells of our body, the cells 
of our spirit. 

The old planets, buried or changed, are no longer ours. 
We have woven new eyes and hands in these years of 
conflict. 

See and take the new joy and slay the old pleasures. 
Rise in the sun and gaze at the light of the zenith. 
Trample the chemical dust of your lost illusions. 


7 


VI 


If I travel to Cashmere or Aran or sail four seas, 

I am still at home in my body and sit by my fire. 
Smooring the sods at dusk, 

I creep under the wings of two angels of fight and 
darkness. 

Adding a sod in the dawn to the ashen embers, 

I wait for a guest who will share my dangerous fire. 


8 


VII 


I shall fold up my tent of sky and pass on in the 
morning, 

leaving a sign of my journey on the road. 

Under the stars of my flesh my will goes onward, 
reading the body’s signs, led by a windy flame. 

I am alone, but I shall be glad of comrades, 
who carry tents, but fear not to cast their old skies 
away. 


9 


VIII 


He who will shake the tree of death without fear 
shall have strange apples of knowledge in his hands. 

I offer you a sack of your own will 
to store the fruit of forgotten energies. 

Fallen red hopes and faiths are what the wind brings. 
Partake of them, and eat of my flesh and blood. 

The apples of knowledge eaten to the core 
are the food of the poor man who shall inherit the 
Earth. 


io 


IX 


With the eyes of a child and the heart of a naked 
beggar, 

I wander eastward and westward beseeching your 
wills. 

Dry crusts of your longing cast away 

will nourish the poor man who weaves a little new star. 

And his little star will shine in red through your 
windows 

and beckon you to a feast of forgotten angels. 


n 




X 

I call you to save the world and yourselves and your 
children’s children 

by a tarantella on naked swords of lightning. 

Axe there no intrepid ones with a smouldering hope 
who will leap dangerously over the abyss of knowledge? 
What if you fall? You will reach a certain star 
and annihilate its fires with your singing impact. 

It is out of bursting stars that I shall build 
my new kingdom of merciless will to beauty. 




XI 


The Holy Ghost is an eagle with thunderbolts in his 
beak. 

He cuts the arc of the heavens with his lightning 
winnowing ripe faiths and hopes with the wind of his 
planing wings. 

He brings you the rumour of a new terrible will, 
a clean song of triumph for all your body’s stars. 

And they shall shout for joy in chorus and antichorus, 
flying out from the nest of two thousand years that 
the storm has beaten down. 


i3 


XII 


Three million men and three million hopes have faflen 
in triumph singing, 

and the old earth has paled like a moon and flickered 
out. 

But we are born again on a strange new star, 
and wander awaiting a compass. 

Steer by the light of your faith, O ship, 
hull down from the port of illusion. 

Steer through the night of the dead, 

and the young sun will arise, 

naked and white and fair, and climb to the zenith. 


14 


XIII 


We have shattered our idols with shells in a furious 
anger. 

We have striven to kill our faith with a mighty shout. 

Our will is obscured in the battle, and we are numb. 

But creation blows through a trumpet riding the 
whirlwind, 

and nearer, instantly near the tide of its music rolls. 

Now the dead shall arise in our hearts to fight the last 
battle exultant, 

and over the waters a calm of white flame brood 
awaiting the end. 


15 


XIV 


Men of burning brows, I have read your sentence of 
fire. 

Smouldering dust of dust, you carry a message. 

And deep in your eyes is the memory of a dream 
that your will once knew, buried in circumstance. 

You will see your sign on my face if you will but 
pause. 

The will of it will sear you forever, and we shall walk 
foreign ways. 

But alone in the thundering heart of the aching city, 

we shall be unanswerable reasons, 

that nothing in the dark firmament dare oppose. 


16 


XV 


The stones of the street are dazzling with liberty, 
and bound feet of hurrying damned souls polish their 
surface. 

Bend your will to the uncut stone of my heart 
that no frost cleaves, 

and learn the desperate certainty of your star. 

Though we walk alone, we carry the bread of angels. 
Strike stone on stone alone, and kindle the world. 


17 


XVI 


I have burned in your flames, my people, for many 
years, 

and I am not yet consumed. 

I gather the fire of love and anger and failure, 

and store it for you in my bosom. 

Wrest my flaming sword from me, for I am the angel 
of Eden, 

and the laughter of our God shall crackle and leap 
and roar 

to the dance of thrones and powers and dominations. 


18 


XVII 


I tell you to tighten the strings of your five senses 
and the string of your sixth sense. 

Drain the cup of experience to the dregs, 
and drain it again and again, 

but guard your senses and let them be keen and hard. 
Wrestle with the angel of knowledge till you know 
his every fibre, 

but resist him to the end of the menacing night. 

The brew of the stars is heady and intoxicates 
children. 

Stagger once more to your feet, and with a cry 
walk steadily along the gulf looking fearlessly down¬ 
ward. 

The fight of false dawn with its wind shall be all 
about you. 

Dance on the brink, and leap the abyss at sunrise. 


19 


XVIII 


Our parallel lines shall meet in a cross at sunset. 

And when the bugles shrill pain on the last redoubt, 
in the shock of conflict a child shall be born of our 
marriage, 

with flame on his brow and flesh of crucified stars. 


20 


xrx 


Here in the streets of the city I follow the huntsman’s 
star, 

over the peaks of knowledge and down through the 
valleys of travail, 

shaping a song of steel chill from the waters of 
foresight, 

yielding to none and conquering none, naked of body 
and windswept. 

I call to three sandwichmen in their lonely wisdom. 

They cast their burdens and march with me side by 
side. 

Tramping westward homeless, naked and windswept, 

spattered with mud on our feet and our backs and our 
thighs, 

we march to the bridal-bed of all Messiahs, 

breast to breast in the creamy slime we have chosen, 

and terrible flowers shall spring from our loins in the 
night. 


21 


XX 


They would give the dead torso of our world strange 
artificial limbs 

and a head with a clock inside of subtle combinations, 
and embalm this corrupted flesh and deck it with 
strange garments. 

But I, a thief in the night, 
shall bear this dung away 
and bury it in the garden of my heart 
to fertilize my harvest, 
while the host of those they have slain 
shall dance the dance of dead bones on its unmarked 
grave. 


I 


22 


XXI 


Let us weave the funeral march for the death of our 
world in triumph, 

even-paced, sure-footed, slow, with unbroken rhythm. 
We bury the world in the grave of the hopes and faiths 
we have slain, 

and scatter the seeds of our will on the trampled earth. 
Flowers of flame shall blow in the midnight air, 
and torches of beauty light holocausts on our bones. 


23 


XXII 


They gathered the roses of slime while the spring 
triumphed over the storm-clouds: 

now they lie mown in ranks, flowering the land of our 
will. 

Of the cut stalks I gather my harvest, and press them 
close to my bosom, 

strong heart to strong heart beating, building the 
firmament of naked steel. 


24 


XXIII 


I tell you to see yourselves, your worlds, by outward 
reintegration. 

Build of these fallen bodies a new and armed desire. 

Affirm the conflicting tides of war that run in your 
rushing channels, 

force them out from your heart to flood the fen- 
country of weakness. 

Bathe the land with your blood, sweating beauty from 
every pore. 

If you have found your God, wrestle with Him till 
sunrise. 

Give Him your strength, and receive the power that 
pours from His arms. 


25 


XXIV 



A clean-stripped arrow of will hurtling into the pool, 
black with the scum of grey dreams and abandoned 
onsets, 

I plunge, and the widening circles catch the sunlight, 
break on the banks of the world in dying music, 
though the dark water-serpent bury me in his coils. 
And the sky shall shout, 

and this clouded disc of a world be never the same. 


26 


XXV 


If you find me within you, you find the very piston of 
your own will, 

and I shall obey the word you speak if it be clean and 
fair. 

But you must know me such as I am, 

hard and built for your task and that task only, 

nor shall I bear other burdens save at your peril. 

And driven too slow or too fast, I shall wreak your 
own will against you, 

destroy your soul and wait for another will. 


27 


XXVI 


The Son of Man has banked the fires of the weak, 
created by the Father from time’s beginning, 
with a terrible slacking will for two thousand years. 
And now at a word the weak may arise and marry the 
strong, 

and breed giant sons and daughters for the future, 

walking the world as kings, 

who serve one another with proud humility. 


28 


XXVII 


Do not glorify your triumph, O my people, 
but rather glorify your utter defeat. 

If you had beheld the struggle from your mountain, 

reintegrating its chaos, erect in the sunlight, 

and thrusting the shock of it like a sheaf of lightnings 

into your hollow bosom, 

your warfare would have ended in a day. 

But you went travelling little roads of self-pity and 
petty hatred, 

and lust and vanity and altruism, 
and you have left me a task, 

to gather my wandering sheep into an empty sheep- 
fold. 

L shall blow my trumpet afar, and the rumor of its 
call shall overtake you, 
shivering your silence, 

as the cold moon shines on your nude embrace in the 
night. 


29 


XXVIII 


Conquered peoples, forget your history. 

You have had magnificent failures, and they have 
kindled your fire. 

But the strength of the conquering strong and the 
strength of the conquered weak 
are as water and thundercloud when interwoven. 
Absorb your conquerors by proclaiming in their 
temples 

the future without a past that extends before us, 

and they shall be one with you, 

and you and they the dancing slaves of your will. 

I say unto you that the Great Wall of China has 
tumbled down. 


30 


XXIX 


The Son whom the holy men of the earth put to 
death on a stormy hill 

has forged out of weakness through seventy generations 
a sword to swing on high in the frosty air. 

It is well-tempered and tried with meekness and 
abnegation, 

and with it for seven years we have mown the poppies 
of selfishness down. 

Children against their fathers, and sons against sons 
have struggled, 

and land against land and sea against sea, 
and the sword is harvesting clean. 

Shall we thrust it back in its scabbard, 
or twirling it on the summits, 

swing it straight and far till its steel is shivered in 
the sun? 


3i 


XXX 


You are climbing a desperate cliff in the cold fog of 
settling illusions, 

step by step cutting the rock with your nails. 

And strange birds hover around and dart down on 
your naked body, 

tearing your flesh with beaks of counsel and ad¬ 
monition, 

or dropping their excrement of abuse in your eyes. 

And your flesh shivers and strange dreams take shape 
in your brain, 

while the dangerous roar of little men rushes below you. 

But there is a red star above, if you can but reach it. 

When you have plucked that star which is waiting for 
you in the zenith, 

then you may march with me along the road. 


32 


XXXI 


Dance on my body, dance on my heart, if you will; 
trample me into the slime, and bury me at the cross¬ 
roads. 

But I have given you a new dream of heaven, 
and lit a flame in you from my heart that you cannot 
extinguish. 

And I shall shout as I die: 

“Arise from your old dead bodies. 

Arise in the dawn with me. 

For the wings of God are beating up from the eastward, 
and at noon they shall cover us with their shining 
folds.” 


33 


XXXII 


I tell you to draw the arrows and swords upon you, 
rising erect in the morning air of battle. 

Struggle alone on the hilltop encompassed with foe- 
men, 

weaponless save for laughter and songs of joy. 

Be the scourged of men for the sake of the Spirit 
within you: 

shout the fighting song of peace with the last drop of 
blood in your body, 

and free yourself for love of your enemy, 
dark knight of eternity faring onward beside you, 
by inviting the blow of death’s silver accolade. 


34 


XXXIII 


You ask for miracles, and you do not see them. 

Is not a poem a miracle, or a child? 

The will of a mother shaping her dream in silence for 
nine months of thirty days, 
or the will of a ruler redeeming the selfishness of his 
land heavy year upon year, 
if gathered up with faith and love in a single passionate 
instant, 

would raise Lazarus in his winding-sheet from the 
tomb. 

But they and we are concerned with our Father’s 
business. 

Nimrod performed a miracle and died. 


35 


XXXIV 


Heal yourself by burning away your wounds. 

I am a searing flame to consume your flesh to the bone. 
Lie with me on the mountain in my embrace, 
and wrestle with me till you have conquered my 
semblance. 

You will know me then as an eagle, 
and I shall bear you away. 


36 


XXXV 


Woe unto you if you persecute men in my name. 

I tell you to persecute with a quenchless anger, 
but persecute yourselves with the love of me. 

Brand yourselves with the spiral of creation, 
bounding your desires and releasing your one desire. 
Brand yourselves with the cross of your own redemp¬ 
tion. 

And brand yourselves with my terrible arch for your 
preservation, 
folded in wings of fire, 
naked body of man to naked body of God, 
begetting new worlds of white music in the night. 




37 


XXXVI 


I am come to preserve you now if you will heed me, 

but if all of you stand aside, it may be that this is the 
end of ends. 

You have broken the ancient mould; 

you have broken your dreams and poems; 

your music and pictures are gone, 

your cathedrals and systems and prayers. 

You have slain the faith and the hope and the love of 
the old grey nations; 

you have sold the will of the poor for a copper penny. 

And you have bought defeat and called it victory. 

You are slaying words and ideas, and arranging letters 
in battle, 

blowing them down with the breath of your strutting 
laughter, 

creating new pomps of line and sound to replace them 
in your brain. 

I am come to sound my Name at last for your healing 
or your undoing. 

Babel is fading westward, and the lower walls you 
built are already ablaze. 

Leap from the tower, and I will shelter you from 
yourself in my bosom. 

Or do you await the last great war in Hell? 


38 


XXXVII 


I have left the house of my people who bore and 
redeemed you. 

I have woven a body to enter your ruined home 
and to sit by your dying fire. 

I bring you the flesh and blood of the Son, the undying 
will of the Spirit, 

and I shall lie with you and preserve your race 
by breeding a child unto you from my shining loins. 
But you must consent to the marriage. 

Is the bride unwilling to bear her Lord a son, 
and must I wander the roads seeking another star? 


39 


XXXVIII 


Men and women of Europe and little children, 

you have gathered a life of awful grandeur during 
these years of endurance, 

and I shall try to assume my share in reaping the 
harvest for you. 

A child of light has been conceived in your womb, 

but are you prepared to rear him? 

Will you accept the charge of his destiny? 

You and I are cells of his flesh, dreams of his longing 
spirit. 

Let us shape our dreams to the end of ends with the 
will to redeem our creation, 

or we shall fail more terribly than the fallen sons of 
the morning. 


40 


XXXIX 


If you are a lonely star 

and cannot share your joy with a spouse or a friend, 
and have no moons, 

store your light and shed it over the darkness 
that stretches before and behind you year upon year. 
Project one quenchless ray with faith and love 
for fifty aching years through the void around you, 
and you will be the guide in eternity’s zenith 
of a river of human stars whom you may redeem in 
the end. 


4i 


XL 


Obey the foolish that you may comprehend them. 
Folly is often compounded of simple things, 
and belongs to the simple of heart. 

It is a privilege that must be won. 

Afterwards perhaps you may throw it away, 
or bestow it with a smile on a little child. 


42 


XLI 


I am a man of my time, though perhaps of another 
also, 

and I will sing my songs and fight my battles 
in the way you have taught me to sing and to fight 
among you. 

But remember that I am also an affirmation 
of all the angels and devils you have created, 
and on your bosom I set my seal of eternal conflict. 


43 


XLII 


You are moulded of dust and of flame; 
dust to conceal your dream, 
flame to consume your desire. 

I am peering into the shadows of your heart, 
and I tremble at what I perceive. 

An angel of light guards your heaven with his sword, 
and would shield you from the hell of your own 
refusal. 

And all the white channels of your body and spirit 

are striving with all their force 

to create a symphony imaging your conflict. 

The music awaits its final resolution. 

Wrest his sword from your angel, and conquer your 
dream. 


44 


XLIII 


You hold in your hands the reins I have given you, 
and you must drive till you die the flaming horses of 
the sun. 

They are horses of war and peace, 
the dark horse and the white, 
my beautiful curvetting steeds. 

I give you the track of fire you must follow, 
but woe unto you if you wilfully tangle the reins! 

You will fall from your chariot headlong into the hell 
of everlasting absence and denial. 


45 


XLIV 


You say you would be alone. 

But everything within and without, cities and 
constellations, 

laughter and friend and foe, are woven into your fibre. 
They are waiting for you to sing their song, 
they are waiting for love and pity, 
waiting for strife, waiting for singing conquest. 

I laugh in your heart as I wait, 
and the cool night of my wings veils your troubled 
wonder. 

Give me your hand, and we shall go onward together 
in the streets of the poor who wait for our shining 
message. 


46 


XLV 


The whole of heaven lies in the silver cup of your body 
in living splendor. 

Wander its pulsing streets in gentle silence, 

and you may pour out your heaven in light about you, 

yet be the richest of men, though you give it away. 


47 


XLVI 




Live the life of the morning stars in chorus, 
drown their song with the tides of your heavenly 
laughter. 

Pour out your soul with a cry of joy on the darkest 
corners of secret misery, 
and the pinions of your pain will soar with you 
into the terraced heaven of my heart. 






48 


XL VII 


You are a very old world, to be sure, 

but I wish the day would come of your second child¬ 
hood. 

Can you not find a beggar’s crust of illusion on the 
road, 

and eat it in my name with a little faith 

though it be crusted with mire of doubt and false¬ 
hood? 

When you are poor in knowledge and have eaten the 
bread of illusion, 

you may create your dream and share its reality. 

Don Quixote was the true knight of my grail. 


49 


XL VIII 


You speak of Prometheus perhaps, 

but have you, I ask, ever stolen a spark of fire? 

The flame that warms leaps out of generous error, 

and out of that holy folly alone shall come 

the men who will find pure fire and kindle the world. 









XLIX 


Wander the stormy road seeking alms of strangers, 
begging the crust of knowledge and love from mur¬ 
derers and thieves, 

sharing the dream of the prostitute and the statesman, 
seeking a little ray in the darkest alleys. 

So shall your innocence outlive your childhood. 

So shall your dream be immortal, 
your desire never come to an end. 


5i 


L 


If our fathers invented cathedrals and epics and 
gravitation, 

perhaps they were only the dreams of a passing age. 
Euclid projected geometries, Buddha theologies, 
and they were born full-grown, yet they are dying. 
But death is the living widener of horizons. 

What if Rheims and geometry are passing? 

Their twilight offers you a new dimension. 


52 






LI 


Five hundred years have passed since you made your 
first discoveries, 

and you have been broadening ever since, 
but losing the depth of the spirit from whom you came. 
You have stumbled upon the old dimension at last, 
but unless you have care, you will make it a toy of 
your brain. 

I bring you news from afar of a certitude, 
contained in the coming instant when you shall know 
that all the lands and peoples of this world, 
all stars and solar systems, 
wax and wane in your blood and in mine alone, 
and if we redeem their births and crucifixions 
as they flood in the very cream of our holy loins, 
singing and dancing together as one in the morning, 
we shall return to our kingdom as conquerors, 
and blow the red battlements of illusion down. 


53 


LII 


Onward you rush underground, 
strange men in winding sheets reading papers in every 
tongue, 

eaten by worms of knowledge in the shadows, 
craving you know not what in the speed of the train. 
I would tear away your clothing and pour light upon 

y° u ’ 

that you might live in a world of singing stars, 
rushing on in the gladness of the morning, 
bearers of tidings, and tidings yourselves, 
to our Father aloft in the dayspring. 

And I could use you to heal other dying stars, 
if you would consent to the gentle task before you. 


54 


LIII 


Europe, my little child, do you know how I see you? 

You are a homeless traveller wandering naked in 
winter, 

eating your hands and arms, 

and stanching your blood with ice that you may not 
die. 

I will send you manna from heaven, 

I will give you my body and blood, 

and my dreams and longings, 

if you will lift up your eyes and forget yourself for a 
moment. 

Turn away if you must, 

but I could save you ten thousand years. 


55 


LIV 


Do you know that your eyes as I gaze in their depths 
are the wings of an archangel, 
beating under your forehead, upholding the world of 
your dream? 

I have given them charge over you, 
and you cannot fall from the sky without my knowl¬ 
edge, 

and you cannot fall from the sky without your will. 
My knowledge and your will shall be one and the 
same, 

the ebb and flow of a single tide, if you hearken 
and do what we both have dreamed since you broke 
away. 

The Father and I are lonely, 

since you ran away to sea one ancient morning. 


56 



LV 


You are scattered and lost, and you wonder what 
drives you onward, 

blind and deaf and dumb, toward a certain flame. 
And some of you fear that flame and call it hell, 
and others long for its warmth and call it heaven. 
But I tell you neither to fear it nor long for it. 

You are that flame. 

Use its unquenchable torrent 

to flood this world with the tide of your own redemp¬ 
tion, 

and then in one final effort 

create Me among you to burn for ever and ever 

in the rising flood of one crystal symphonic chorus. 


57 


LVI 


I walk in your light and shadow as under the smoky 
lamps of a sleepless city. 

My feet beat a march on the pavement of your hearts 
in an even and fanciful rhythm. 

It has been a long night, and I have been lonely and 
cold, 

and now I am hungry and beg you for food and shelter. 

Only a crust and a word in this shivering light of false 
dawn, 

but if you hearken in kindness, 

I shall bring you the sunrise, 

vibrant with all fulfilment, and radiant with wings. 



58 


LVII 


Why will you crucify each other with rivets of steel, 
binding men and women and little children 
in canyons of dust and ashes and bitter toil? 

Crucify me instead for your own salvation. 

Crucify me again and again, 
crucify me day after lingering day. 

You cannot change all at once, nor is such my will. 
But turn your world of enslaving machines upon me, 
remembering why I suffer for your redemption, 
and the day will come when your machines will die. 
They have not stolen your souls as yet, remember. 

I will serve you more faithfully than these gods will 
ever do, 

should you let them be born for your everlasting 
destruction. 


59 


lviii 


The past and the present are made of your differences. 
You are little worlds revolving in isolation, 
whipped like tops by the devil who is an artist. 

But your speed is slackening now, and you are begin¬ 
ning to wobble. 

Before your dance is over, accept my whip. 

It will sting you and flay you at first with a cleansing 
fire, 

but you will dance on forever as one world, 
with a joy that no effort can tire, 
no doubt can ever destroy. 

For you will be mine at last, 

one planet of liquid ardour, 

one body, one soul, one song, 

one tide of light rushing over the dykes of Hell. 


L1X 


I am building a body of clay for my task in you, 
and it shall be ribbed with fire. 

Consumed you shall never be, 

but the wind of my passion shall cleanse you of little 
loves and of little hatreds. 

We shall leave home behind and the gods of the hearth, 
and take a well-tried staff for our long dark journey. 
We shall go through sleet and hail, 
and the stones shall bruise our bleeding feet in the 
night, 

but there are lambs to find, 

and I need companions on my bitter road. 

Cast your desire away as an alms when a stranger 
meets you, 

and I will give you a will of steel to gather your dreams 
together. 

And if you fall with faith in the press of their sudden 
coming, 

you shall rise again with a shining star in your hand. 


61 


LX 


You are an orchestra playing my tragic music, 
and if a fiddlestring snaps the music still goes on. 

I tell you to tighten your strings for my cry of triumph, 
tighten them well to share the pain of the other 
strings. 

Use the bow of your will with the gentlest but firmest 
cunning, 

keep the time I set for the world which is your stage, 
and yield the finest tone your wood conceals, 
strange instruments I have made. 

For you are born to create a new Jerusalem 

from the stones I have hewn with my eternal labour, 

and it must arise with music to the stars. 

But if you build a Babel in your pride, 

woe to you and your sons and your children’s children. 

You and they shall wander alone in the night 

without speech or sight 

in the icy Hell of your everlasting longing. 


62 


LXI 


Cease to strive for your separate existence. 

You have been splitting your soul into tiny atoms, 
and splitting those atoms again, 
and you call this originality. 

But you will never find the ultimate atom of life 
which is really you. 

I can show you another way, 

the way of the man who rules his own soul in white 
humility, 

that he may know the world and contain it all in his 
heart. 

Accept the world of men and women and children, 
of saints and artists and prostitutes and thieves, 
the generous world that would conceal its beauty 
in the mantle of poverty and evil semblance, 
and drain its cup to the last sweet and bitter dregs. 

Let your heart and your brain be the living city of 
men, 

with all the waves of conflict that flood their red 
thoroughfares, 

and integrate this world in the madness of a creation 
that you would die to mould. 

You will lose yourself in its fife, and know what is 
yours no longer, 

but Europe and Asia shall hymn the living grail in 
your bosom, 

and you shall contain the mighty city of God. 


63 


LXII 


You say you do not believe in Hell, 
but I say unto you that you live in a hell of longing. 
The god to whom you consent to fling a contemptuous 
bone 

is a kindly watch-dog, you say, 

and too charitable to create an eternal hell. 

But how can I offer you my charity if you refuse to 
take it, 

or even to look at my face when I pass on the road? 
You separate yourselves and your children from me, 
and offer your gifts of cast-off useless trinkets 
to a grocer’s god you have made yourselves out of 
your silly pride. 

I do not know him, for he has no part in the splendour 
of my heaven. 

But he may rule forever if you like 

in the tinsel hell of absence you are building 

with the indomitable will I have set in your bosom. 




LXIII 


You are a new world pouring out of my heart. 

I am shaping you from the chaos that you have made 
out of the world you lived in through years of warfare. 
I find you soft to my hand and very bitter, 
but you can be moulded if you accept my will. 

You have made the bitterness of war for yourselves, 
and now you are making a darker bitterness, 
and you call it peace. 

Truly I fear that you are a brew of gall. 

But because I love the cup which my hands have 
shaped, 

I will drain your draught to the dregs and take all 
your sins upon me. 

All I ask is: remember me in the night 
When you lie in the warm embraces of your spouse, 
and in the day when you sit with your children at 
table. 

And remember me when I shall knock at your door, 
for I shall have brought you home out of winter 
shipwreck. 


65 


LXIV 


If a stranger snatches your pennyworth of joy, 
which you have been hoarding to spend in the booth 
of the fair, 

do not weep and bear anger against him forever. 

Perhaps he was poorer than you, 

and at any rate you are one with him, 

and you may share in his pleasure, 

and so it shall be returned to you, 

and he have no profit of it. 

Or if you have a penny 

and cannot spend it upon your desire, 

or know not what your desire is nor how to attain it, 

give your unknown joy to a child, 

or offer it to the men of your time in service. 

I tell you a joy which is thwarted throughout a man’s 
lifetime 

shall shine eternally as a star in his heart. 

You cannot slay a joy, but you may put it to sleep, 
and it shall awake and rise with the sun immortal 
after its passionate dream of a thousand years. 


66 


LXV 


The saints have seen the body and blood of God in the 
heart of a flower, 

but I have seen His sacred Limbs erect 
in the naked body of an ulcerous beggar 
shameless on the sand of a city beach. 

And I have seen His forgotten Eyes in those of a 
treaty-maker 

chewing a fat cigar on the deck of an ocean-liner. 

And I have seen His smile of utter sadness 
on the countenance of a ragged prostitute in the Mile 
End Road. 

And I see His look of longing and regret 

in your face as you sit in the tram, 

and I dream of the Face you image, 

dark traveller from the past to a shining present 

you fear to face with your eyes uplifted bravely. 

Let us go together with the same driving hunger, 
subjecting our little wills 
to the terrible will for happiness 
that spurs us onward across horizons to our doom. 
For the doom we might choose is attired with burning 
rainbows, 

the doom we should spurn is a little thing soon con¬ 
sumed. 


67 


LXVI 


The trumpets of scorn are blowing in the sunset, 
and your God sinks in the sky of your vain regret. 
The tawdry banners of insolence wave proudly, 
and the streets of the city resound with your idle 
cheers. 

But I walk alone in the gutter unseen and forsaken, 

I who bring you the sun and the moon and the stars. 
I would shower the planets of love in triumphant music 
over your bodies which dream in the light of noon. 

I would pluck the brightest world in my crown and 
toss it to you for a plaything, 
if you would be children once more and play with 
your lives as a game. 

And the victor would be he who gave his life for a 
beggar, 

and in his heart would rise and fall 

the fountain of light and everlasting youth. 

Run to my bosom, children sprung from my loins. 
Lost stars, run to your sun, and I shall warm you. 

I am your sky, and I bend over you with wonder. 
Laugh with me, and you shall be heavens ensphered. 


68 


LXVII 


You have built a tower of terrible questionings, 
and you have climbed to its summit and gazed at your 
earth below. 

And you are proud to have risen in the world, 
and would lift up the other old nations to your height. 
But I fear you have built upon sand and your tower 
is settling. 

You hear strange sounds in the night, 
and the girders of your reason begin to snap 
with the strain you have put upon them. 

No birds alight at your turret window, 
the stones of your prison are cold, 
you have lost the key. 

I bring it to you if you will only take it, 
the key you fashioned yourselves 
for the door that leads back to the garden, 
the garden you left one ancient day and that still is 
waiting for you. 

I have sprinkled it every day with my blood, 

and you shall pluck the flowers 

if you will turn back and leave your tower behind. 


69 


LXVIII 


You are a drowning world, 

and you are a world My hands have created from 
nothing to be drowned. 

But will you be drowned in the Light of My Body 
reflected 

in the light you might shed in waves of warmth in 
each other, 

or is it your desperate will 

to be drowned for ever and ever in your own fire? 

The choice is your own. 

for I have dowered my children with the free will 

to choose Me or themselves for their final goal. 

But if you choose the dark flame of your lonely self- 
satisfaction, 

its terrible fire will burn in you forever, 

the fire of the lost desire you have forsaken, 

and you shall not be consumed. 

For the sons and daughters of the Most High are 
immortal, 

sprung from the golden loins of eternal Light. 


70 


LXIX 


If one of you has beheld my speed for a moment, 
and the flaming instancy of my following feet, 
arrest the world which reflects me in its passing 
with all your will in a single moment of action, 
for when the time is at hand, I shall give you the power. 
Stop the earth in its course like Joshua, 
and offer it up in your heart 
with its dreams and its sins and its beauty, 
its triumphs and failures and daily incarnate redemp¬ 
tions, 

offer it up as your own very heart pulsing with bitter 
anguish, 

as I have offered it up to My Father when I was hung 
on the tree. 

For one that surrenders his world to me, 

or surrenders it to his brethren, 

ten shall follow, 

and ten follow each of them. 

And they shall be weaving new intercrossing orbits, 
until the nations at last shall be one shining body, 
reflecting my hands and my arms, 
my head and my neck and my shoulders, 
my breast and belly and loins, 
my legs and feet, my thighs and creative organs, 
heart beating unto My Heart in a final assumption, 
the marriage of God and man in the brooding heaven 
of our silence, 

and we shall conceive the new dream that I have 
desired always, 

but refrained from bearing that you might share in 
my joy. 


7i 


LXX 


You have had kings and emperors and republics, 
and you have been ruled by the tyranny of license. 
And now you would have a soviet of labour, 
and perhaps you are coming nearer to your dream. 

I had a city once for a little while 

that had wearied of many rulers, 

girdled with sun and snow in a laughing plain. 

Its name was Florence, 

and now it is the grave of triumphant failure. 

But four hundred years ago when it had grown old 
and wise, 

my gonfalonier Niccolo Capponi, 
intoxicated with spiritual freedom, 
stood in the council room of the golden city, 
and knelt on the cold grey stones in humility, 
calling upon his people to choose a king. 

And on a summer day in the open square 
the people of Florence chose me as their King, 
and inscribed my name on their palace wall with 
cheering, 

and inscribed my name on the walls of their heart 
with joy. 

They have forgotten me now as you have forgotten, 
but I still wander seeking my lost crown. 

O my children, if you will only elect me, 
if you will give me a trial, 

I shall be a gentle and tender ruler. 

Crown me with thorns if you will, 

but the thorns shall put forth roses, 

and they shall shed dew upon you, 

and we shall build the land of eternal youth. 


72 





LXXI 


Blow your trumpets, but we will ring our bells. 

Burn our bodies to ashes and slay our children, 
but you shall never consume the substance of our 
dream. 

We have dreamed of our God in the night 
and walked with Him in the day. 

We have gathered out of your bitter persecution a 
will that walks on the waters, 
and builds a city not made of human hands. 

Its walls are rising out of the sea of our tribulation 
to the symphony of our faith and our passionate 
prayer. 

Your tides may flood it now, 

but the work of our will is ascending, 

and the day will come 

when you will knock at the gate with tears and in 
sackcloth, 

and we shall open the gate of our shining city, 
and the fort of the Holy Ghost, your august 
Preserver, 

shall be your refuge and home 

in the terrible war of the nations which is at hand. 


73 


LXXII 


What are you doing, my children? 

What are you doing to one another, 
and what are you doing unto yourselves in the mad¬ 
ness of your strife? 

I want lambs, and not wolves. 

Strong and terrible lambs, if you like, 
but terrible with meekness and innocence. 

You may look in the eyes of a tyrant without 
flinching, 

but which of you dare peer into the depths of the eyes 
of a child? 

Which of you dare gaze in the eyes of a virgin 
naked to your lust, and not turn away? 

Do you think I have moulded the will of the weak for 
all these generations 

that you may use it to slay yourselves body and soul? 
When you have bathed your anger in my waters, 
you shall be given the sword of the archangels, 
and then you are free to slay. 

But then you shall slay your pride and your evil 
passions, 

and enter my city in triumph 

as the laurel-crowned conquerors of your own will. 


74 



LXXIII 


You cry for a soviet, 

but will you work for yourselves or work for each 
other? 

I think you will never be happy 
till all of you work in peace by the sweat of your 
brows. 

And your reward will not be money and pleasure, 

nor fame nor splendour nor power, 

but to gaze in the eyes of your comrades 

and see my Eyes enthroned there 

in the common love you will have for one another. 


75 


LXXIV 


The conquered lead their conquerors behind them, 
and they may win redemption from their pain. 

But you, their conquerors, have taken their sins upon 
you, 

not in humility but satanic pride, 

and you are in deadly peril from yourselves. 

The nations you have defeated mourn in sackcloth, 
and turn their eyes in contrition to My Father. 

And they have forgiven your sins 

as they hope to be forgiven by you and Me. 

But when you stole their birthright 
and set the seal of your bitter hatred upon them, 
you grasped as well at their terrible lust for power, 
and now you are stonier far than they had dreamed. 
And when the line is drawn for the last great battle 
of evil, 

it will be fought on your fields, 
and you will go down forever unless you change. 


76 




LXXV 


You are the creditors of the fallen nations, 
and you are the steward of your little world. 

If you have forgiven the debt of their daily and hourly 
stubborn crucifixions, 

will you not forgive the tinsel debt of transitory gold 
that is crushing their bodies under its awful burden? 
I fear the day will come 

when you will cry out in anguish for forgiveness, 
and perhaps they will not forgive on that day, 
as I forgive if you ask me, 
but bury you forever under their iron shields. 


77 


LXXVI 


If you heed my words, and hand them on to your 
children, 

do not add to their meaning the practical wisdom of 
organizing men. 

If I give you my heart, 

why should you mingle it with the chemistry of your 
brain? 

The message I bring to you admits of no qualification, 
and you may not choose the part of it which you like, 
and forget the rest with a smile. 

Set my few words in your heart for meditation, 
but do not construct philosophies to fit them, 
nor write vast commentaries to bury them in your 
darkness. 

Make My Word flesh in deed, and not in pride. 



LXXVII 


I tell you a secret that I have guarded long, 
and it is a golden secret of glad tidings. 

You are the servants and handmaids of the Lord, 
and if your desire is pure and a single flame, 
the Holy Ghost shall come in the night upon you, 
and you shall conceive in your spirit 
the Word of God and the Only Son of the Father, 
and bring Him into the world for man’s salvation. 
For my Heavenly Father shall sow His Seed in the 
soul of His earthly lover, 

and your soul shall bear fruit and present the world 
with joy. 

And if you are no longer virgin, 

your love shall transmute your knowledge, 

and if you are weak, your faith shall make you strong. 


79 


LXXVIII 


The pendulum’s arc diminishes to a hair’s breadth, 
and life’s last pulse beats weakly in our void. 

Let us build a wind of our cool and close-pent passion, 
and in our dying, 

chained to the instant’s point, burst our fetters clean. 
So shall there be a new pendulum in the zenith, 
swinging with measured music from east to west, 
weaving a planet of golden singing conflicts. 


80 


LXXIX 


A wind shall come out of the night and shake great 
branches, 

and a shower fall of pentecostal rain. 

And in the north dull fires of anger shall smoulder, 
and in the south an evil harvest be blasted. 

And in the east the sons of the morning shall gather, 
and in the west the dark battalions of evil. 

And earth shall be a stricken gong of terrible dying 
music. 

And fight shall go out of the sky. 

I will hang in the midst with my arms to either horizon, 

my head in your zenith, 

my feet in the brooding nadir of your desires. 

And you shall struggle around me, 
strange shadowy passionate armies, 
fighting to gain or to lose 
the tree upon which I hang. 

But I tell you upon that day the tree shall grow out 
of your hearts, 
and I shall be within you 
shaping the course of your blood. 

And if you will crucify yourselves on that tree, 
which is the tree of knowledge of which you have eaten, 
and offer your body and blood with me for your dream, 
the tree shall put forth blossoms, 
and you shall shine with the glory of your conquest, 
fighting my heaven with a new loveliness, 
and we shall arise together in our youth, 
and build a new universe with the morning stars of 
our joy. 


81 


LXXX 


You have developed your senses perhaps, 
but I tell you to look for a new sense. 

Were it not for your sense of touch, 
you would live in a world of two dimensions, 
yet you will only believe in that which your eyes 
can see. 

I am bringing you every day the gift of this new sense, 
the sense of grace which transcends your three dimen¬ 
sions, 

and opens my heart to you if you will accept it. 

Yet few of you stretch out your willing hands 
for the key of eternal beauty and repose. 

It opens the door of the land of immortal sunrise, 
with rose-flushed peaks of wonder ever transformed. 
And it is a land of transcendent golden tides, 
weaving inward and outward a quiet music, 
one with my heart, pulsing my secret Name. 

I call to you softly, O firstlings of my flock, 
your Shepherd is piping a song of dying tone. 

And the twilight falls over the worshipping fields, 
and there, rising low in the east, is your little new star. 




82 


LXXXI 


My people of Europe, a man came out of the West 
who spoke my will, though not in humility, 
but his heart was kingly, his dream was for your 
service. 

And he entered your cities in triumph, and you 
strewed branches before him, 
and he sat at your table and hearkened unto your 
scribes. 

And they cheated him at your bidding with fair words, 
for the West believes in words, and holds to their 
meaning. 

And in his name you slew the peace of the world, 
and the unborn peace of your children conceived in 
his message. 

And now you cry out that the West has left you alone, 
and so it has always been. 

You would hallow with words the Father who is in 
Heaven, 

and slay his Son upon earth with your holy speeches. 
And when the flame of the Holy Ghost would descend 
upon you, 

you legalize your apostasy in a code. 

You have slain peace this day for many generations, 
and yet I would offer you another chance. 

How long will you keep thanking Me in public that 
you are not as other men? 

The spit of your mouth is corruption, and yet you are 
glad. 


83 


LXXXII 


You cry in your pride that you have won a war, 
and that you have saved your children’s heritage, 
but I tell you that you have sold it for a penny 
in the market of cast-off spiritual garments, 
and spent your penny upon a trinket of brass. 
Say what you will, the Galilean has conquered. 
The dream He died to save is surging westward 
in a slow triumphant tide without foam or sound. 


84 




LXXXIII 


I hang on the windy hill of your mirthless laughter, 
and wait for the end in bitter agony. 

And on my left is the cross of My Father’s anger, 
on which some of you shall be crucified with despair. 
And on my right is the cross of My Father’s mercy, 
on which some of you shall be crucified with joy. 

And the wood on my left shall burn with you in the 
dark fire of your longing, 

and the wood on my right shall flame with you in the 
golden fire of my love. 

And this Calvary I announce is a sign unto all the 
nations, 

and when it shall come to pass, you shall remember 
my words. 


85 


LXXXIV 


You wander through the streets of your smoky cities, 
grimed with power and shadowed with evil dreams, 
armies of men who have forsaken your leader, 
hosts of the blind in a land of dark illusion. 

And I am walking your streets as one of you. 

And step by step with each of you I see 

two angels walking in silence, 

one in white with a cross, 

and one in red with a sword to offer you. 

On the cross you may slay your bodies, and free your 
souls. 

With the sword you may slay your souls and degrade 
your bodies. 

But I walk alone with my cross, and no one sees me. 
I walk alone in your night, 

who would pour the dayspring upon you from my 
arms. 

The hour of your choice is at hand 
when you shall stand naked before me. 

Will you choose the naked lust of eternal fire, 
or the naked loveliness of your ancient bodies, 
with the seed of the Heavens implanted in your loins? 


86 


LXXXV 


Europe, poor conqueror, split into countless bodies, 
you are rotting and crumbling in your grave. 

And all of you have a secret gnawing worm 
which is hatching larvae out of your green corruption. 
Tomorrow you shall arise from your mouldering 
coffins, 

and dance the terrible dance of death in the streets of 
your fallen cities, 

blowing with skeleton lips on ghostly trumpets 
dying symphonies of forgotten sound. 

Hearken now in the night to your fallen armies 
dancing with clouds of flies creeping over the stench 
of their slime. 

“We are what you shall be,” they cry in the aching 
darkness. 

“You shall be even as we are 
in the dawn that breaks full soon.” 


87 


LXXXVI 


There are nations I know which are proud, 
and which make of their pride a virtue. 

And there is a little country of humble men, 
who fear that they are too proud, 
but they are scattered and dwell in many lands 
and are little recked of. 

They are the messengers 

who announce my world in their deeds in many places, 
but only the stones have ears to attend their passing. 
There are many things, O my people, 
which pride will not let you do, 
but the humble and poor of heart are fitted for any 
action 

by the freedom of their golden humility. 

Learn to rule your heart and your will, 
and you shall rule the outer world with firmness, 
for it will have entered you as its quiet shrine, 
as I shall have entered you and been enthroned. 


88 


LXXXVII 


Fear the man who prays for righteousness, 
and run to the man who humbly prays for mercy. 
The West has a dream, and the dream has been 
spoken, 

and it is a noble dream 

whose fruits have fallen before they were ripe, 
because its seer spoke in the dangerous name of utter 
righteousness. 

When the West and the world shall hearken unto a 
seer 

who tells his dream in the sacred name of mercy, 

my will and hers shall be done, 

and the trespasses of the nations be forgiven. 

But that seer when he comes 

will hearken unto the counsels of humble men and of 
children, 

and glow with another flame which cannot be ever 
consumed. 


89 


LXXXVIII 


If you are shaping a poem, a will, or a nation, 

I beg of you, never rest satisfied. 

If you behold your work and feel that it cannot be 
bettered, 

I tell you a day shall come 

when it shall betray a fatal and irrevocable weakness. 
Thus did a prophet speak for the West and fail. 

You will never attain perfection, 
or you would not be human, 
but if you have the passionate sense of your failure 
after your sternest effort, 
you will have shaped a foundation 
which will bear my perfection when I bestow it 
upon you. 


90 


LXXXIX 


The world drifts on a tide of salt regret 
under an ashen sky. 

And it has forgotten utterly its will, 
the noble seed I planted long ago. 

And in the pulsing of my heart I hear 
the dull despair of all the conquered nations, 
the nations conquered by fire, 
and the nations conquered by pride. 

If they would conquer themselves, they could be 
happy. 

A hundredth part of the effort they put into warfare 
would win eternal peace for them and their children. 
When will they plant their garden and wait for its 
harvest? 

I planted a garden two thousand years ago, 
but my seed lies dark and cold in its stony soil. 


9i 


xc 


You surround your cities with troops and fortifica¬ 
tions, 

splitting your world into little lonely bodies. 

And when you are strong enough you slay one another, 
and build other bodies that you may slay them in 
turn. 

But I tell you now you have only one fort to build, 
the fort of the Holy Ghost which endures forever, 
the fort which no cannon can batter, no armies ever 
destroy. 

And it must be built in your hearts, 
and riveted with the eternal bolts of the will 
I have given you, that you may be firm and 
triumphant 

over the hosts of Hell that fight in the streets of your 
body. 

I give you my Name as a battle-cry 
and the sword of my pain to defend you. 

Over the walls of doubt and fear, leap to the glad 
affray! 


92 



XCI 


You have debased my suffering for centuries, 
and thanked me because I was scourged and crowned 
with thorns, 

and spit upon and nailed to a cross and pierced with 
an iron spear, 

and you have enjoyed the pleasure of perversion 
in picturing my physical pain for you. 

And when you think of a Hell in which your enemies 
may suffer, 

it is a physical hell of sulphurous fire. 

But the body dies soon enough, 

and it is not so hard to die after all, 

as most of you have found in these years of warfare. 

It is pain of the spirit which I find hard to bear, 
the pain of your careless heartless isolation, 
the scourging and crucifixion of my will 
that you should enter my kingdom, 
your use of the godlike will I have set in your bosom, 
your wish that my soul should die in a land of 
strangers. 

When you kill your own will with laughter, 
you crucify mine, day after burning day. 

I burn every hour in the hell of your loneliness, 
and am not consumed. 

When will you let me return at last to my Father who 
is in Heaven, 

with the news that I have redeemed you all from the 
slavery of darkness, 

the news that you are marching with me at last 
to the doors of your golden citadel of light? 


93 


XCH 


Is there one little nation in all the world which will 
choose a saint as its ruler, 
and obey with joy his quiet unspoken commands? 
Why do you smile at my saints, and refuse them a 
voice in your councils? 

And why do you turn aside when a statesman would 
utter my message? 

You laughed at the lonely wisdom of Abraham Lincoln, 
and you have not hearkened yet to his silent pain. 

Is there not one of your rulers who will take my cross 
from my shoulders? 

Is there not one who is kingly, the servant of all my 
poor servants? 

Seven hundred years ago St. Louis of France, 

a king by the right of his holy humility, 

went secretly on a journey to Perugia, 

and knocked at a gate and asked for my Brother Giles. 

And my Brother Giles came out, 

and they knelt in the street together, 

and silently gazed into each other’s eyes, 

and wept and prayed. 

And when one of your kings shall kneel alone on the 
stones of the Strand or the Corso, 
and pray for the grace to carry the cross of his people, 
I shall have greater hopes of his land’s redemption, 
and I shall give him the power to rule their souls. 


94 


XCIII 


All of you are my children, 

and you have your virtues and failures. 

But if one of you is base, 

his virtues shall wither away into cancerous evils, 
and if one of you is sound, 

his failures shall be more triumphant than victories. 
Know yourselves first, for the man who knows he has 
failed, 

has learned the measure by which to attain my per¬ 
fection. 

But the man who rejoices because he is victorious, 
has forgotten the holy humanity of weakness, 
and the hour of his peril is terribly near at hand. 


95 


XCIV 


If your earthly king bids you unto a feast, 
you hasten with pride, and array yourselves in your 
finest garments, 

and tell of it to your friends for many days. 

And if your king summons you for your crimes to his 
throne of human judgment, 
you are brought to his feet in dark despair. 

Yet he is dust that is blown away in the evening, 
and troubles your eye on the windy morning road. 
But I am your heavenly king, 

and I bid you to sit at the feast of my joyous humility, 
and I bid you to bring your sins to my throne of mercy, 
with all the hope and faith in your hearts, and I shall 
free you gladly. 

Yet you are ashamed to know me, though I am flame. 


96 


xcv 


If you pass me upon your road, 
do you know whither I am bound? 

I am going to Versailles to be crucified again. 

You have sold me for thirty pieces of silver, 
and your soldiers are still casting lots for my torn 
garments, 

and I shall come again and be sold again. 

And so your world goes on. 

But while there is yet a chance, I would save you all. 
While one of you still remains unfound, I will con¬ 
tinue my journey. 

While one of you still wanders on in the night, 

I will die for his sake with gladness. 

And if one of you shall die for his friend, 
he shall have saved me a lifetime. 


97 


XCVI 


A word came out of the West and spoke to the nations. 
And the instrument of that word 
was a man whom the nations nailed to a cross on the 
hill of Versailles. 

But his word shall rise from the tomb on the third day, 
and shape its will in the agony of your peoples. 

And those who doubt shall see, 

and those whom you have slain shall be healed by 
their faith. 

And the wind of that word shall level many kingdoms, 
and the fire of that word consume your ambition to 
ashes. 


98 


XCVH 


I am a fisher of men, 

and I bait my hook with gentle deeds of mercy. 

But you are fishermen of another kind, 

and you have baited your hook with my body and 
blood. 

You have offered your God as a snare to the contrite 
of heart, 

and slain their bodies and your own souls to gorge on 
them in your shambles. 

You may crucify me a thousand times for your soul’s 
salvation, 

but do not eat my body and drink my blood 

to gratify your swinish gluttony. 

Yet even this I forgive, if you come home. 


99 


XCVIII 


They have taken away your Lord, 

and you know not where they have laid him. 

They have stolen away your ideal, 

and you are become as slaves 

who toil without cease because you fear to die. 

But I come to you to lift the stone from the tomb. 

I come to you with a promise. 

I come to you with a prayer. 

I come to herald a day, 

and to ask you to lend me a sunrise. 

I come with all that I have 
and with all you have ever desired, 
and I knock at your door 
and ask for a little pity. 

I bring you your heart and mine. 

I bring you the light of the dayspring. 

I bring you the world of all that your dreams have 
created. 

I bring you the world of all your forgotten dreams. 

Not a sunrise, a poem, a prayer, 

a picture, a song, a cathedral, 

not a smile nor a sigh, 

a birth nor a death nor a marriage, 

not a dream nor a hope, 

a victory nor a failure, 

not a triumph of beauty or love has been lost or 
forgotten. 

I come to restore them all in transfigured splendour, 
For I am the Friend who was lost and is now returned. 
The day is breaking at last out of utter darkness 
for those who have eyes to see or a heart to remember. 


ioo 


Out of the deep shall roll 
in terrible golden splendour, 
majestic, instant, slow, in a tide of silence, 
the awful march of the Syllables of God. 

To my right and left they shall form in their naked 
essence, 

.full and round, shaped by my lonely passion, 
shaped as your bodies and souls are shaped 
by the word of my dread resemblance, 
my surging will embodied before the throne. 

And in your eyes the earth shall shrivel away 

to a dusty atom of forgotten failure, 

and the sun and the moon and the stars to motes of 

And 1 ! shall set the firmament to sing in the walls of 
your bosom, 

and you shall rule its music with exultation. 

And there shall be no more time. 

And night shall pass. 

And you shall be burning stars of joy set m my heart 
forever, , 

before whose splendour the seraphim shall bow. 

Or will you choose instead, 

my love, my dove, my anointed, 

the pitiful world of machines and shopworn pleasures, 

where lives are sold two for a penny or thrown away? 


IOI 








































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